Among the casualties of the tragedy was equal justice under the law.
Among the casualties of the tragedy was equal justice under the law.
T oday marks two years since George Floyd died in Minneapolis. His death might’ve just passed through the news cycle, were it not for that video captured by a bystander. It became a “day that will live in infamy” to all sides, for the harrowing circumstances of his death. To progressives, it was the pinnacle of “police brutality.” Conservatives mark the day as the beginning of the unchecked nationwide riots that erupted in the name of “racial justice.”
There is much to mourn on May 25. Floyd’s unnecessary death tops that list — but also the loss of law and order that followed and the erosion of impartial justice.
In the days after May 25, 2020, the four officers involved were fired. Mobs led by Democratic politicians such as Maxine Waters and Black Lives Matter formed early on and demanded that Derek Chauvin, the lead accused, and others be judged guilty, as prosecutors including Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison announced their intent to bring charges.
The egregious act was, after all, caught on camera, so the swift and harsh actions were hardly a surprise. But the Chauvin case that followed was a mess in many regards. The disgraced officer did stand before a jury, but one that wasn’t sequestered during the trial — i.e., quarantined from public knowledge about the case — and that was bombarded with the anti-Chauvin messaging in the corporate media that all of us received. The media released long polemics against his innocence every day.
As Chauvin was the most hated man in America, the presiding judge should have taken extra steps to maintain the jury’s constitutionally guaranteed impartiality. Yet jurors were free to hear protest leaders threaten violence, were they to return a verdict of not guilty. The protesters were egged on by politicians (again, Maxine Waters) who encouraged a “confrontational” response, so that “they know we mean business.” One cannot help but think that jurors’ instincts for self-preservation kick in when threatened with mob violence, and they may vote “guilty” in order to keep their family safe — a point made by Florida governor Ron DeSantis at the time. Either disingenuous or aloof, the presiding judge Peter Cahill remarked about Waters that a “congresswoman’s opinion doesn’t matter a whole lot,” even as her comments were being blasted all over news media at the time. Some jurors attended Black Lives Matter protests while others said that “it will be hard to be impartial” in the case.
In a similar vein, President Joe Biden addressed the nation the night before the verdict and declared that the evidence was “overwhelmingly” in favor of a guilty verdict and that he was “praying to God” for it. Though he said this after the jury had entered deliberations, his intervention was norm-breaking, to say the least. A professor at the Hamline School of Law in Minnesota, meanwhile, went so far as to say that Chauvin was entitled to a “fair trial, not a perfect one.”
Chauvin, we recall, was willing to plead guilty to murder charges. Local officials were even planning to accept this deal, but the plea was rejected by then–Attorney General William Barr. Why? As the New York Times reported, Barr was worried that a deal would be “perceived as too lenient by the growing number of protesters across America.” Since when should that influence a prosecutor’s decision on a plea in a complex case? So rather than pursue justice in this manner — presumably, the sentence even in a plea would not have been light, considering the circumstances — the public was given the spectacle of a flawed trial.
Looking back, we can see that three pillars of criminal justice in America — the presumption of innocence, an impartial jury of one’s peers, and prosecution in good faith — were thoroughly cracked by the end of the trial. Chauvin certainly caused Floyd’s death, but there is no excuse for abandoning due process. The whole point of a constitution and common law is to defend citizens’ rights when the whole world stands against them. If these can be trounced during the most high-profile trial in the country, in full view of the world, without much dissent, then anyone is fair game. We should be deeply worried about equal justice. George Floyd died, tragically, on May 25, 2020. Equal justice may be following him to the grave.